What more does this guy have to do to get a shot in the big leagues? Other than one blip in 2009 with Potland of the PCL, where he walked 40 in 50 innings, he's been spectacular, if not solid. I know I said that backward, but it better describes his minor league career to date. He's thrown 315 innings in his six year minor league career, walking 95 while striking out 361. With the Mariners AA and AAA clubs the last two years, he's thrown 88 innings, with a K/BB ratio of 99/15. Yes, an almost 7:1 K/BB ratio.

Now I don't know a damn thing about Scott Patterson when it comes to his stuff,  his repertoire, his velocity and all, and it's probable that scouts have not really liked what they've seen, or he would've been given more of a chance before now. And I get that he's 32 already, and isn't seen as a player you look at as a major piece for the future of a rebuilding franchise. At some point, you have to look at results and want to find out if that translates to the Major League level.

There's also the Mariners current bullpen situation to consider, which hasn't been in any kind of dire straits, but you would think that another quality arm wouldn't hurt. And there may also be 40 man roster considerations. They may not feel there's enough room to add him in right now, so they're content with leaving him in Tacoma.

I hope he gets his chance. He's done everything you could hope for from a minor leaguer, it's about time 
they see if he can be a valuable member of a Major League bullpen.

I ran across something odd when looking at GB/FB relationship for pitchers. First, here's a look at overall affect on runs per 9 when plotted against GB/FB ratio (GB/(GB+FB), to be exact):

As you can see, there appears to be an ever so slight decrease in runs as a pitcher's GB/FB rate goes up. It's when you split it into relievers and starters that it gets interesting:

As you can see, relievers show a slight increase in number of runs as GB/FB rate goes up, while starters show the opposite trend, decreasing runs as GB/FB rate goes up. Neither trend is very strong, and the low R values suggest that for individual pitchers, it has little predictive value for R/9, but the sheer number of pitchers in each group (1800+ for relievers, 1100+ for starters) should mean that we're really seeing something real here. I don't quite know what to make of this.

Just for disclosure, this has been taken from Fangraphs for the period of 2002 through 2010, all pitcher-seasons of 20 IP or more. As stated, I'm using GB/(GB+FB), and these two groups were made up of those who were strictly relievers and those who were strictly starters. FWIW, the mixed group, those who both started and relieved in the same season, has a trendline almost exactly the same as the first chart.

I thought I'd post this here because there are a lot of smart baseball people at BtB, and someone might be able to shed some light on this. What's going on here? Why would batted balls create a differing effect for relievers and starters? Is there some kind of bias here that's creating these divergent results?

With the recent signing of Jack Cust and the general feeling that Bradley doesn't have much of a role on this team, is there any chance at all that he can be traded in a deal that could help the Mariner's? There's only one hope, and that's to exchange his bad contract for someone else's.

This was inspired by a post at The Hardball Times, where Paul Francis Sullivan speculated on some my albatross-for-your-albatross deals. Is there any horrible contract out there that you would trade for Bradley?

Aaron Rowand comes to mind. Decent enough defensively to back up at all three outfield spots, and probably still good enough as a hitter for a fourth outfielder. There seems to be a need for a right-handed backup outfielder next year. He does have two years left on his contract though, so the money's not equal and we would be extending our albatross for another year.

Or there's Oliver Perez. He's a left-handed starter that has shown flashes of brilliance separated by long bouts of drudgery and injury. He's only got one year left on his deal, and might be a guy that could catch lightning in a bottle in Safeco.

I only went off of the players he listed -- I'm sure there are other bad contracts out there that teams would like to unload.